The word “addiction” means a tendency to overindulge in any activity that creates some pleasurable within an individual. The essence of addiction is to search for a “high” that normal life does not supply in normal circumstance. Addicted individuals cannot function without the addictive substance thus increasing their inability. Such activities might include watching the TV for long hours, playing certain video games, DVDs, or being hooked to social networking websites such as the face book, the twitter among others.
The television is a powerful media of communication that can be addicting if an individual pursues it with unusual intensity, thus we refer the individual as being “hooked” however, being addicted is quite controversial because there is no kind of television viewing that can be classified into the more serious category of destructive addiction because addiction is frequently focus on negative aspects.
Addicts merely pursue a pleasurable experience to be repeated again and again so as to experience function normally. Considering television viewing in the lights of the conditions that defines serious addictions. The television experiences allow an individual’s to explore the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state as a result if that. The urge to keep watching the TV is an attempt of fulfilling their worries and anxieties of reality and at the end they become absorbed in a television program because they have overestimate their control over television watching.
At last, there is a general tendency of the TV addicted individuals to they put off other activities to spend many hour watching television at the expense of other important life activities. To the addicted individual other experiences seem less attractive and more difficult somehow to produce the desired pleasure. Heavy viewers testify that they find television almost irresistible when the set is on, they cannot ignore and turn it off.
It is the adverse effect of television viewing on individuals that defines it as a serious addiction. Generally the effects of the TV television on an individual’s habit distorts the sense of time, it weakens relationships by reducing and even eliminating normal talking and communication.
The television can at times expose individuals to instances with violence and pornography, which has an adverse effect on the individual’s behaviour as they relate to other members of the society. In case of children such programs must be avoided at all cost through close monitoring of what they are watching. In my opinion, the TV if not well made use of can become very addictive thus influencing an individual’s behaviour.
The DVD’s are recorded motion moves designed to pass certain message to their viewers. They became addictive if the viewers constantly pursue them in an attempt to full fill their desires. Although viewers choose on the nature DVD, s to watch, some choices expose their viewers to can easily violence and pornography and repeated watching provokes them to try out whatever they admire. If they expose them to violent scenes, the viewers pursue a violent lifestyle that became very destructive to the society.
The increasing popularity of playing video games among the youth has been cited to impact them negatively. Most popular games feature graphic and explicit violence. Playing such video games lead to increased aggression levels and lower academic grades in young children, for this reason playing video games has a possible strong link to antisocial attitudes and behaviours.
The internet which supports the social networking websites is the most recent media whose usage suggests that time spent on the net is much more than the time spent on other medias combined and particularly television. Those strongly addicted to the spent less time watching television. The social networking websites main functions seem to be information, communication, entertainment, and affiliation. The websites have negatively affected the users such that they can spend over 10 hours chatting and communicating with their friends at the expense of serious. Due to the nature of the social networking websites whereby an individual invites even strangers as their friends the media can easily expose certain individuals to certain behaviours they had not decided to get into making the social networks very harmful.